Search Analysis blog is all about search engines and other useful tools available on the internet. The main focus of Search Analysis blog is to cover the changes and updates which occur in search industry.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Google is the industry leader in search volume. It is far ahead then other search engines in the industry. As most people search on Google for their search requirements so it is very important to understand Google search operators or options.

Following are important Google search & advanced search options / operators which can help you master Google search:

Find web pages that have:

all these words: This will help you in finding web pages that contains all the search terms you type in.

exact wording or phrase:

This will help you in finding web pages which contains the exact phrase which you have typed in.

You can also use this feature in standard search by surrounding your phrase with quotes.

Example:“Red Hat” will give you those web pages which contain the exact phrase “Red Hat”.

One or More of these words:

This will help you in finding web pages that contains at least one of the words you type in.

You can also use this feature in standard search by using [OR] between your words.

Example:online OR offline. This will give you those web pages which contains either online or offline or both.

Don’t show pages that have:

This will display only those pages that don’t contain the words you type in.

This can also be used in standard search by adding a – (minus sign) to the beginning of the word which you don’t want.

Example:Sport Shoes –Nike. This term will display results for sports shoes but will not display any pages which contain term Nike.

Important: There should be no space between the – (minus sign) and word. See the above example.

Results per Page: This will help you in setting the number of results which you want to view per page.

Language: This will help you in specifying the language in which you want to see your results.

File Type:

This will help you in specifying the file format for your results. You can choose any format to see results in any file format.

This can also be used in standard search by specifying type of file with [filetype:] query.

Example: filetype:pdf. BY using this will only show results which are in PDF format.

Use [define:] to find definition about a term gathered from various sources.

Example: define:router will show definitions of router from around the web.

intitle and inurl query:

If you include [intitle:] or [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title or url.

Example: intitle:computer search will return documents that mention the word "computer" in their title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (title or no).inurl:computer search will return documents that mention the word "computer" in their url, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (url or no).

Important: There is no space between [intitle:], [inurl:] and the webpage url.

Search for Synonyms:

Use [~] if you want to search fro synonyms.

Example: ~auto will return results for auto and its synonyms cars, trucks etc.

[%]: [10%100] or [10 mod 100] will return 10. You can use [%] or [mod] to calculate percentage.

[^]: This will raise a number to the power of other. Example: 2^5 will return 32.

These are some of the major Google search operators or options which you need to keep in your mind while searching. This will make your search more effective and it will deliver more efficient results.